external hard drive problems

I have a maxtor personal storage 3200 external hard drive. I am using a macbook with 10.5.8. My problem is, my mac simply wont detect the hard drive. It does not appear on disk utility so i cant format it. it does however appear in the system profiler under the usb tab. but that is the only detection so far. I have read the maxtor website instructions, but it gets to a point then just doesnt give you anymore information.

I found a thread that talked about the power supplies that come with it. Apparently they are not all that great and fail. It is possible that you are not getting enough power to the unit to spin up the hard drive yet enough to turn the light green.

I would see if you can find another power supply with the same power output and see if it works. If it does, you need to get Maxtor/Seagate to replace it if it is still under warranty.